Byline: ART THIEL P-I COLUMNIST
IN ITS QUEST to get most, if not all, its 117 Division I football schools into a bowl game, the NCAA, via the Pac-10, has come upon a masterstroke:
Las Vegas.
Nowhere is there a more ready-made market for obscure bowl games than Vegas, where at any given moment there are perhaps 100,000 visitors shuffling about on sidewalks, looking with bleary eyes for bright lights, noise and pointless activity, which describes the vast majority of postseason college games.
Instead of trying to drum up interest in the Doorknob.com Bowl in some wretched city with no interest in either contestant, why not play several minor bowls over the December holidays in a place where wasting $50 over four hours will be considered a bargain?
The Vegas idea took root this week with the announcement the Pac-10 has agreed to send its fifth-place team to the Las Vegas Bowl, which was moved to Christmas Day at the behest of ESPN and its corporate parent.
The cable channel knows better than anyone that since men are not allowed to use their new power tools on that hallowed morning, the only alternative to talking to family members is TV sports.
In fact, it was ESPN that helped usher the demise of the Aloha and Oahu bowls, the Dec. 25 doubleheader in Honolulu that recently occupied the Pac-10's fourth- and fifth-place teams. The games produced solid TV ratings, owing to the nationwide need for escape that day. ESPN didn't really care that the games went virtually unattended, even by fans of the participating schools.
Not only did no Hawaii resident want to waste a holiday away from the beach to watch a meaningless exercise, many mainland fans didn't like the expense and hassle of booking a Hawaiian Christmas on relatively short notice.
'It was embarrassing,' said Jim Muldoon, the Pac-10's assistant commissioner. 'There was nobody in the stands.'
So the games' 'owners' decided to move the contests to the mainland. Dumbfounding anyone who has ever spent a December day around Puget Sound, the Oahu game wound up in Seattle on Dec. 27, at least for this season.
Typically, bowl games are held in warm-weather locations to hype the local tourist and real-estate industries, which makes the selection of Seattle perplexing. We have lousy weather, little desire for more tourists and no affordable real estate closer than Othello. Additionally, it is not possible in Seattle to a) drive, or b) park, even if driving were possible.
Why anyone would want to come here voluntarily in the winter, especially to sit in the cold and dark in a bad seat at a stadium designed for baseball, to watch mediocre teams slug it out for the right to say, 'We're No. 43!' is a question best analyzed by psychologists specializing in self-abuse issues.
It is possible that this year's game could work out, owing to the fact the Washington Huskies may be in it. The Huskies have that 7-4, 6-5 look about them, which could qualify as the fourth-place team ticketed for the Low-Fat, Double-Tall Bowl, or whatever the event here is called.
As the sports world knows, if a landfill were painted purple and gold, 20,000 Huskies fans would show up to cheer it, martini shakers in hand. Throw in the novelty of a football game in the Mariners' ballpark (people would show up just to have their tickets scalped, to recapture the feeling of the baseball season), and attendance might not be a disaster.
But if no Northwest school qualifies for the game, its enchantment will be one of the great mysteries of the age.
The other former Christmas game in Hawaii, the Aloha, failed to secure a deal at San Francisco's Pac Bell Park, apparently for the same reason it failed in Honolulu.
'The organizers felt it would be a difficult draw in the Bay Area on Christmas Day,' Muldoon said. 'The expense to open the ballpark on a holiday would be high.'
That left the Pac-10 without a tie-in for its fifth-place team. So the Vegas bowl readily agreed to move from its Dec. 20 date, which conflicted with final exams at several Pac-10 schools, to the Christmas slot, and happily took the No. 5 Pac-10 team to match up against the No. 2 team from the Mountain West Conference.
'In Vegas, there's a better chance to succeed,' said Muldoon. 'You have a lot of people and a lot of hotel rooms already there, and it's an easy flight from most cities in the West.'
Exactly. That's why the City of No Substance and its 40,000-seat stadium would be a perfect spot for a half-dozen or so of the minor bowl games. Just line them up from Dec. 23-28, fill the lineups with Western teams, and ta-da, the Vegas formula is perfectly executed: Everyone has good time while losing only a small fortune instead of a large one.
Yes, there are sacrifices, but crossing off El Paso, Shreveport and Seattle from the holiday-travel destination list is something that must be done for the greater good.
Some moralists may object to the nation's gambling capital hosting so much college sports action, particularly given the epidemic of campus gambling.
But none figures to come from Seattle, where the local college team has become a virtual partner with Nike. The Vegas scene is filled with fewer dubious characters and purposes.
P-I columnist Art Thiel can be reached at 206-448-8135 or artthiel@seattlepi.com
